


The Incarnate

by ShadowMage



Series: The Turning Wheel: An Elder Scrolls fan series [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Genre: Elder Scrolls Lore, Family, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fighter's Guild (Elder Scrolls), Gen, Mages Guild, Near Death Experiences, Poverty, Rags to Riches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 03:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19165342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowMage/pseuds/ShadowMage
Summary: Dreams. Prophecies. Curses.Mystical things which, for some, are nothing but superstition.For some, however, they are life changing. Especially when the road they make you walk is the one you wish to avoid.





	The Incarnate

 

Socucius Ergalla's eyes ran down the papers, his brow slightly furrowed in thought. He flicked them up to look over the slender Dunmer girl sat before him, studied her for a moment, before looking back at the paper. She certainly didn't strike him as a villain: the poor thing looked pathetic. Her shoulder-length mud-brown hair was uncombed and messy, her thin and somewhat pointed face was pale, her fiery red eyes were fixed on the floor and her hands were clasped in her lap.

Socucius shifted a little in his seat and coughed, politely, to alert her that he was about to speak. ' _Ahem_ -I'd like to ask you a few questions, and then we can get your release papers sorted, alright?' The girl nodded slightly, not taking her eyes off the floor. Well, at least she responded. Socucius replaced the arrest report, which he had been reading, on his desk, and readied his quill over the release forms. 'Excellent. Now then: name, please.'

The girl swallowed, before mumbling 'Raveren.'

'Surname?'

'Lirodni.'

Well, it was good to see they had the right person. Socucius smiled slightly at the dry joke, and wrote the name down. 'Good. Age?'

'Sixteen summers.'

A scratching of quill on paper. 'There. Now: your papers mentioned you were born under a certain star sign. What might that be?'

'The Tower.'

'Interesting.' Socucius mused as he wrote. The Tower was a star sign that was under the charge of The Thief, if he remembered his constellations correctly: those born under it seemed to have a knack for finding gold wherever they went, even if it was only a handful, at least according to _'The Firmament'_. He looked up from the forms at her again, this time watching her a little more closely. 'And, what skills would you say you were proficient in?' The girl's brow furrowed, and her eyes darted to the left and right.

'How...how do you mean, skills?'

Socucius tilted his head slightly to the side. 'Skills such as how good you are with a blade, or how proficient with a college of magic.' He smiled gently at her. Her eyes flicked up to meet his, quickly looking back down at the floor.

'W-well...I...I can use a bit of Destruction magic...and I've used Alteration and Restoration magic, too.'

Socucius nodded and jotted them down. Destruction, Alteration, Restoration.

'I, uh, I guess I'm okay with things like daggers...I prefer them to swords, they're a lot lighter.'

One-Handed, in that case. Possibly make an additional note of preferring short blades?

'I'm pretty agile, I suppose.'

Would likely not wear heavy armour, if so. Socucius thought for a second before putting down Light Armour: she didn't strike him as a mage type.

'And...' She fell silent.

Socucius looked up to see she was looking at her clasped hands, biting her lip. He leaned a little closer to her and prompted 'Yes?' The girl looked nervous: her feet were tapping against the leg of her chair, and her thumbs were running over her hands. He sighed softly, and said in a gentler voice 'You're going to be released. Don't worry: you're not going to go back to prison for something you didn't do.' He tapped the form. 'If you're good at, shall we say, opening doors without having the key...or, perhaps, having it so people don't know you're close by...that's fine. Being good at something isn't an offence.'

The girl chewed her cheek a little before, finally, nodding. 'Yeah...yeah, I'm good at both those things.'

Socucius smiled. 'Noted. Thank you.' He turned to the form and wrote, Lockpicking and Stealth. He placed his quill back in the inkwell and gently blew on the paper to dry the ink. 'Excellent. Well then: if you could just check this to make sure it's all correct...' he said, as he held out the paper to the girl.

She looked up at the outstretched paper with slightly widened eyes, taking it somewhat uncertainly. Her eyes ran over the paper, her brow furrowed, before she looked back up at him. For a moment she hesitated, before nodding. Socucius nodded in return, and gestured to the door. 'Excellent. Well then, just head on through the courtyard and hand that form over to Sellus Gravius. After that: you're free.'

The girl nodded. Slowly, she stood, and it occurred to Socucius that she was awfully thin. She walked over to the door, looking back at him as she put her hand on the handle. Socucius smiled slightly and gave her a gentle wave. She gave a small, uncertain smile back, before turning the handle, and stepping into the courtyard.

Socucius' smile faded. He turned back to his desk, and looked back at her arrest paper. It had been sent ahead of her, so the guards knew what to expect upon her arrival.

* * *

 

_NAME: Raveren Lirodni_

_AGE: 16_

_RACE: Dunmer_

_GENDER: Female_

_RESIDENCE: Anvil_

_PRIOR OCCUPATION: None: the prisoner claims to have 'worked odd jobs whenever [they] could, whatever paid enough for food.' Examination notes that the prisoner is capable of novice-level magic from the Destruction college, likely self-taught: unlikely to cause trouble during imprisonment despite reason for arrest._

_BIRTHSIGN: The Tower_

_CRIME: The prisoner has been charged with assault and theft._

_On the 12th of Last Seed, 3E 427, the prisoner states that she was returning home at about 7 pm, when a group of three men, whom she did not know or recognise, began to follow her. They caught up with her and surrounded her, and she claims they began to make unsolicited and unwanted lewd and threatening comments, with one grabbing her from behind. In response, the prisoner used a fire-based touch spell on the man who had grabbed her, aiming it into his face, causing him to jolt backwards and trip, hitting his head on an exposed rock. The healer who arrived on the scene when the authorities were alerted described the burn wound as scarring, but not the direct cause of death: the actual cause was the fall, which fractured his skull and caused haemorrhaging._

_The victim has been identified from the two other men who accompanied him: Marcus Fronius, a local Imperial dockworker, aged 35. The story the two other men, named Bornio Frallus (a 37 year old Imperial dockworker who was a friend of the victim) and Gareth Fronius (the victim's 40 year old stable hand brother) gave was that the prisoner had in fact, earlier that day, stolen Marcus' coinpurse, and the three had spent all day tracking her down to get the money back. On being questioned about this, the prisoner admitted to stealing the coinpurse._

_Additional notes: while being held in the Anvil prison, the prisoner told the guard that she had a younger brother called Naphalen, who needed food, and was the reason she stole the coinpurse. It was deemed a perversion of justice to change her sentence, no matter the motivation, and so her sentence remained, however the brother was indeed found and arrangements are being made to have him sent to an appropriate location for safekeeping._

_SENTENCE:_

_Theft of 500 septims, or equivalent worth: 5 weeks._

_Assault resulting in indirect fatality: up to 10 years._

_Total sentence length, as determined by the local authorities: 2 years total._

_SIGNED: Langley, Anvil Guard Captain._

* * *

 

Raveren pushed open the door of the Census and Excise Office, and her eyes fell upon the captain. Her heart began to beat a little faster, and she swallowed. It was okay: she just needed to give him the papers and then she could leave. She stepped inside and shut the door, the clacking of the latch causing the man to look up at her. 'Ah. Good, you're here.' His tone was clipped slightly, highly professional, but Raveren could tell he was also hiding a level of annoyance. She held out the papers to him, and he briskly came over to her, the clanking of his armour seeming loud and threatening in the room which suddenly seemed very small. He took the papers and she immediately drew her hand back, clasping it against her chest. For a moment, there was quiet.

'All seems to be in order.' He walked noisily over to his desk and placed the papers down, before picking up a package wrapped up in linen. Raveren watched as he checked over it, and turned back to her, holding out the package. 'Here. You're to take these to a man called Caius Cosades in Balmora.'

Raveren looked at the package, and her brow furrowed again. Why did she need to do that? She wasn't a messenger.

'These orders come from the Emperor himself, girl.'

She looked up at him. A brief, disbelieving laugh slipped out. The Emperor himself? Yeah, right: what the blazes would the Emperor have to do with this? He was THE EMPEROR.

Apparently the captain wasn't joking. He raised an eyebrow at her, and said in an undoubtedly annoyed voice 'I don't know why, the Empire's workings are a mystery to us all: let not the left hand know what the right is doing. But these come directly from the Emperor Uriel Septim the Seventh himself: he's also the one responsible for you being removed from prison after a week and shipped here. So they're bloody serious. Treat them so.' He took a step forwards and pushed the package in her direction, and Raveren flinched, reaching up and hastily snatching the package out of his hands. 'Balmora. Take a silt strider. Or walk. I don't really care, honestly: you're free to do it how you want. Just take them to Caius Cosades, and then he'll take it from there.'

Raveren stepped back and fixed her gaze on the floor again. Why in Oblivion had the Emperor 'freed' her? Well, it was hardly 'freeing': she'd been taken from her home and shipped gods-knew-where. It felt like a ball of heat was building between her ribs, wanting to burst out. Her eyes were starting to prickle with tears. Where was she? Why was this happening to her?

There came a sigh, and then a cold, metal gloved hand was pressing something hard and lumpy into her free hand. 'There. 30 septims. The silt strider's out the door, up the path, and on a scaffold overlooking the town to your right.' Raveren looked up into the captain's face, her vision slightly obscured by the tears. He gave her a small twitch of a smile. She looked down at the coinpurse in her hand, and pulled it in to her chest, gave him a short nod, and stepped away from him. She flicked her eyes up, and saw the door ahead of her. Two steps and she was at it.

The sunlight shone down, bouncing off of the light clay walls of the squat, square buildings around her. The gentle sound of waves lapping at the bank was all around her. There was a tree growing overhead, and a warm breeze rustled the leaves. Raveren stepped forwards, uncertainly, and looked left, up into the small town. There were only a few buildings here: a fairly big one of two stories had a small wooden sign hanging down in front of it, with four others clustered together on the bank as it began to incline up a slope. There were a few other trees growing here and there, but they all grew close to the water's edge. Looking to her right, she saw the bank taper down into the water, and looking down the jetty, she saw the ship which had brought her here, as well as that other Dunmer prisoner who had woken her up. There was no sign of the other prisoner, and she felt a twinge of guilt for being let go so easily: she hoped he'd be let out soon, too. The water itself seemed to stretch on for ages: in the distance she could just make out the silhouettes of hills and mountains, but there was nothing that could be easily seen. Those shores were far away...inaccessible. And instead, she was confined to wherever she was now.

The prisoner...Jiub, hadn't that been his name?...had said that they'd arrived in Morrowind. It meant nothing to Raveren, and the sad thing was that it should: she had been told that Morrowind was where the Dunmer, her race, came from, that it was her true home. But that wasn't true for her: her true home was Anvil, on the docks, nestled under the wooden walkways on the bank with her little brother.

Her heart ached. Across that water, somewhere, was little Naphalen. Was he cold? Hungry? What if the guards had lied, and hadn't found him a good place? What if he wasn't getting fed because where he was staying was run by someone horrible? What if he missed her, and was asking where she was, and was scared? There was nothing to stop the tears at that. She gripped the package and purse close to her chest and just stood there, her body trembling, a truly pathetic sight. For a moment, she genuinely considered wading out into the water and trying to swim to those silhouetted shores. She could see them: they couldn't be that far away. And once she was there, she could find her way back, right?

After some time, however, the tears stopped. She took a deep, shuddering breath and shut her eyes tight. No: swimming out there would be stupid. She could freeze to death at night, or get tired and drown. And if she died, she knew that would be far worse: at least alive, she had a chance of getting back to him, someday.

She would get back to him someday.

She turned, and with a sigh, began to walk up the path to the silt strider, just as the captain had told her.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a bit. Hope I can make up for it ':D  
> This story, and my other Elder Scrolls ones, are going to follow the main character through the storylines of the games: so, anyone who is a veteran of Morrowind reading this, I only hope it isn't too boring. I myself am only just playing Morrowind for the first time, and I am enjoying it, but I may be a little slow with writing because I'm new.  
> However, bottom line, I hope I can write something that people enjoy reading: any suggestions or critiques are welcome :)


End file.
